Inside Harper’s brain: PM dishes on NAFTA, Syria and G20

In a wide-ranging interview Thursday with Clinton-era heavyweight Robert Rubin, Prime Minister Stephen Harper blamed the body politic in the United States for resisting a push toward tighter continental integration.

“The resistance to this kind of thing is far more in the United States than in Canada,” said Harper, who took questions from Rubin and attendees at the Council on Foreign Relations’ headquarters in New York. “The sensitivity here about sovereignty and the negative assessments I often read of NAFTA, completely counter-factual assessments of NAFTA, I think are the real barriers.”

Harper, who gave the American crowd a broad cross-section of this thinking on critical issues facing Canada, was responding to a question from former U.S. ambassador to Canada Gordon Giffin, who asked whether “anachronistic” trade barriers – like the ones that make the Keystone XL pipeline a federal issue in the United States – could one day be smoothed out to make cross-border traffic more seamless.

“On our side, they could,” said Harper, who mentioned the Beyond the Border Initiative and the Regulatory Cooperation Council before turning his thoughts to America’s periodic insularity to free trade.

On the geopolitical crisis du jour, Harper urged his American counterparts tread carefully as efforts slowly rev up to equip Syrian rebels with weapons in that country’s worsening civil war.

“On Syria, I see a lot of criticism about inaction,” said Harper. “I look at Syria over the last couple of years, and I would urge the president and everybody else extraordinary caution in jumping into this situation.” He also referenced his prior reluctance to embrace the Arab Spring for precisely the kind of instability now erupting there and in Egypt.

But on the topic politicos expected to be front and centre during the prime minister’s short trip to New York – Keystone XL, the oilsands and carbon emission policy – Harper didn’t offer any sharp elbows in his remarks, perhaps indicating confidence that the controversial pipeline isn’t in as much jeopardy as some have predicted. The pipeline will create 40,000 jobs in the United States and reduce the country’s dependence on offshore oil by 40 per cent, he said.

Harper directed his more pointed criticism at the belief that economic growth and carbon emission caps can co-exist, an assumption that belies the green strategies of many developed nations, including parts of the United States.

“These are real challenges…where environmental needs intersect and often appear to be at cross purposes with economic and social development,” said Harper. “Unless we realize that — take those things seriously — we’re going to be talking around the real issue.”

Harper’s government has not proven it can meet its own carbon reduction targets and reports indicate Environment Canada is mulling an intensity-based reduction plan for emissions from the Alberta oilsands, something that would not reduce emissions overall.

However, Harper said technological change in the energy sector is “the thing that will allow us to square economic growth with emission reductions and environmental protection.” Two weeks ago, Ottawa unveiled $82 million in funding for test projects to make energy use less environmentally destructive.

For those critical of Canada’s departure from the Kyoto Protocol and its adoption of less ambitious carbon reduction targets, Harper reiterated his condition that more countries come on board to reduce emissions before Canada commit to higher reductions. “There is still not an acceptance in many countries for mandatory targets at all,” he said.

And while that may put off action into a future far too distant for climate scientists, Harper sees growing environmental awareness in the developing world.

“It’s incomprehensible to me when I look at the growth of China and India and I see the kind of environmental challenges that exist today, how those environmental challenges could become tolerable if they became five or ten times as bad,” he said.

Harper also had muted optimism for the G20 as a vehicle for progress on climate change and economic growth, saying the body was effective when member states all faced collective doom in the heat of the 2008 financial crisis.

“As the situations and needs of these different countries diverge, getting consensus is proving to be more and more difficult,” Harper told Rubin, a former Treasury Secretary. “I don’t know if it will be as effective going forward as it needs to be. I do know this – that I think it’s the only mechanism at our disposal.”

Harper joked and appeared comfortable during the event. “You were terrific,” Rubin could be overheard telling the prime minister when they shook hands at the end.